


Unsportsmanlike Conduct

by sturmundwank



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Jeeves & Wooster, Jeeves - P. G. Wodehouse
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hogwarts, Gen, Hogsmeade, Teenagers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-07
Updated: 2020-12-07
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:21:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27936221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sturmundwank/pseuds/sturmundwank
Summary: Bertie buys new socks, fights Slytherins with their own weapons, and fishes Jeeves out of the soup.
Relationships: Reginald Jeeves & Bertram "Bertie" Wooster
Comments: 2
Kudos: 15





	Unsportsmanlike Conduct

It was nearing seven in the pip emma on the Sunday of the first Hogsmeade weekend of fifth year when I first met that wizarding paragon, Reginald Jeeves. My Hufflepuff brethren had already tired of the joys of the metropolis and got started on the long climb back to the castle, leaving me to nose around Gladrags by myself.

After my perusal of Gladrags’s argyle selection culminated in the acquisition of a pair of fuchsia mid-calves, I walked out of the shop and breathed in the evening air. _You’ve put in a hard day’s work, old boy_ , I thought to myself. _It’s time to dive into the nosebag._

I was just about to pop a Peppermint Imp into the Wooster maw and march off to Hogwarts in search of supper when the bloodcurdling trill of Trudie Shacklebolt’s voice penetrated my hearing.

‘BERTIE!’ she warbled from across the street. The Peppermint Imp in my hand cringed. ‘Bertie! I know it’s you! Come here at once!’

A quick look around confirmed I was alone behind enemy lines. Defeated, I pocketed the Peppermint Imp and wormed over to the accursed in-law and her pack of Slytherin fourth-years. They loomed like undersized Dementors in the shadows between two streetlamps.

‘How do you do, Trudie?’ I intoned with nary a soupçon of my usual joie-de-vivre.

‘Oh, I’ve been very well, thank you,’ she said. ‘Which can’t be said of you, now can it?’

I hadn’t found myself in the soup recently, to the best of my knowledge, but most encounters with Trudie were highly infelicitous; seeing as I had just walked into one, I couldn’t exactly retort that the Wooster fortunes were in efflorescence. I stayed mum, bearing up as well as I could under the stares of her Slytherin pals.

‘Aunt Agatha says you’re going to fail your OWLs,’ she nudged.

‘No, I’m not,’ I protested, I thought quite reasonably. You see, I had a head for years and was a dab hand with magical creatures, plus there was that prophecy I had evidently made in third year, not that I remembered any of it. I figured I could hornswoggle my way into NEWT-level History of Magic, Care of Magical Creatures and Divination at a minimum.

I was about to guide Trudie and her toadies through these calculations when the door to Scrivenshaft’s jingled open and an nth Slytherin emerged from the shop. This one I vaguely recognised as a fellow fifth-year, and a prefect at that. He was a tall and solemn sort of fellow, with pale skin and sleek black hair that caught the dim streetlight. The said apparition cast an imperious eye over our group and, to my great joy, twitched minutely when he noticed Trudie.

Trudie, for her part, did something I had never seen her do in all the years of our acquaintance; she simpered.

‘Good evening, Reggie,’ she... she _susurrated_ , batting her lashes like a Hippogriff had got into her eye. I gaped in horror. The other Slytherins shuffled their feet uncomfortably. Reggie, as the poor cove was apparently called, wisely declined to breach our party’s perimeter.

‘Hello, Ms Shacklebolt,’ he replied from a safe distance. ‘Ms Prewett, Ms Yaxley, Mr Nott.’ Lastly he turned to me, but Trudie took another stab at the _ars amatoria_ before I could make an introduction.

‘Oh, but it is so late for you to be out of the castle, is it not? You must not have had supper yet, by the look of you,’ she prattled. That was when a stratagem I could only blame on the excess of Slytherins in attendance began to take shape in my mind. ‘We were just passing by on our way to the Three Broomsticks,’ the i. l. was saying, ‘would you like to come with? I’m paying for everyone, it’s my treat.’

And so my plan was hatched. I could save this poor man from the present nightmare and in so doing secure Trudie’s due deference to the Wooster clan, or at least, I hoped, a less injurious level of disrespect for my person. For the first and hopefully last time in my life, I took a deep breath and dishonoured myself by lying for the greater good.

‘Sorry, Trudie, I truly am,’ I cut in, ‘but Reg and I are actually going to the Hog’s Head.’ We had made no plans to that effect, of course, on account of not knowing each other at all, but I hoped he would see the wisdom in corroborating my fib.

Everyone stared at me like I had grown a second head. Well, the bean I was born with had certainly never supplied gambits of such scale and profundity before, so who’s to say I hadn’t?

‘What-ho, old boy,’ I volleyed at the Reg in question. His eyes glinted darkly at me. I tried to blink in a way that discreetly conveyed my humanitarian intentions. ‘I was just done shopping when I ran into Trudie and her friends here, what! Good thing they kept me company till you came out. I must warn you that I’m all cleaned out after Gladrags, though, so you’ll have to buy your own Dragon Scale, and possibly mine.’ With this vulgar but necessary disclosure, I left both our fates in his hands.

He stared at me all sphinx-like for one unbearably long moment before he opened his mouth, closed it and at last opened it again to mutter, ‘You may repay me when we return to the castle.’ He proffered an apology as irreproachable as it was insincere to Trudie and the Slytherin supernumeraries, and glided away in the direction of the Hog’s Head.

I scampered after the instrument of my salvation while Trudie cried, ‘But Bertie! You and Reggie—’ after me. I threw a cheerful ‘Pip-pip, Trudie, toodle-oo!’ over my shoulder and could just about make out her grimace, no doubt called forth by my association with the wizard of her dreams. Well, she shouldn’t have snootered me for years if she had wanted to plight her troth to one of my friends. Even the abrupt realisation that this chap was not, in point of fact, one of my friends could not dampen my spirits.

November nights can get bally cold in the alpine climes of the Scottish Highlands, not to mention dark. As the season’s first snowflakes began to swirl around us, Reg and I tucked our hands into our robes—the blighted Peppermint Imp in my pocket bit my finger—and hurried off toward the lights of the Hog’s Head, just as we had said we would.


End file.
